Dinny said, quietly: ‘I won’t try to make you, Dad; let’s take it that you can’t. Most people have done something in their lives that other people could not understand if it were known. The difference here is that this thing of Wilfrid’s is known.’
‘You mean the threat is known – the reason for the –?’
Dinny nodded.
‘How?’
‘A Mr Yule brought the story back from Egypt; Uncle Lawrence thinks it can’t be scotched. I want you to know the worst.’ She gathered her wet stockings and shoes in her hand. ‘Would you mind telling Mother and Hubert for me, Dad?’ And she stood up.
The General drew deeply at his pipe, which emitted a gurgling sound.
‘Your pipe wants cleaning, dear. I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘He’ll be a pariah,’ burst from the General, ‘he’ll be a pariah! Dinny, Dinny!’
No two words could have moved and disarmed her more. At one stroke they shifted his opposition from the personal to the altruistic.
She bit her lip and said:
‘Dad, I shall pipe my eye if I stay down here with you. And my feet are very cold. Good night, darling!’
She turned and went quickly to the door, whence she saw him standing like a horse that has just been harnessed.
She went up to her room and sat on her bed, rubbing her cold feet one against the other. It was done! Now she had only to confront the feeling that would henceforth surround her like a wall over which she must climb to the fulfilment of her love. And what surprised her most, while she rubbed and rubbed, was knowing that her father’s words had drawn from her a secret endorsement which had not made the slightest inroad on her feeling for Wilfrid. Was love, then, quite detached from judgement? Was the old image of a blind God true? Was it even true that defects in the loved one made him the dearer? That seemed borne out, at all events, by the dislike one had for the too good people in books; one’s revolt against the heroic figure; one’s impatience at the sight of virtue rewarded.
‘Is it that my family’s standard,’ she thought, ‘is higher than mine, or simply that I want him close to me and don’t care what he is or does so long as he comes?’ And she had a strange and sudden feeling of knowing Wilfrid to the very core, with all his faults and shortcomings, and with a something that redeemed and made up for them and would keep her love alive, for in that, in that only, was an element mysterious to her. And she thought with a rueful smile: ‘All evil I know by instinct; it’s goodness, truth, beauty that keep me guessing!’ And, almost too tired to undress, she got into bed.
Chapter Thirteen
‘THE BRIERY’, Jack Muskham’s residence at Royston, was old-fashioned and low, unpretentious without, comfortable within. It was lined with the effigies of race-horses and sporting prints. Only in one room, seldom used, was any sign of a previous existence. ‘Here’, as an American newspaper man put it, when he came to interview the ‘last of the dandies’ on the subject of bloodstock, ‘here were evidences of this aristocrat’s early life in our glorious South West. Here were specimens of Navaho rugs and silver work; the plaited horsehair from El Paso; the great cowboy hats; and a set of Mexican harness dripping with silver. I questioned my host about this phase in his career. “Oh! that,” he said, in his Britisher’s drawl, “I had five years cow-punchin’ when I was a youngster. You see, I had only one thought – horses, and my father thought that might be better for me than ridin’ steeplechases here.”
‘ “Can I put a date to that?” I asked this long, lean patrician with the watchful eyes and the languid manner.
‘ “Why, yes, I came back in 1901, and except for the war I’ve been breedin’ bloodstock ever since.”
‘ “And in the war?” I queried.
‘ “Oh!” he answered; and I seemed to sense that I was intruding on him: “The usual thing. Yeomanry, cavalry, trenches, and that.”
‘ “Tell me, Mr Muskham,” I said: “Did you enjoy your life over with us out there?”
‘ “Enjoy?” he said: “Rather, don’t you know.” ’
The interview, produced in a Western paper, was baptized with the heading:
ENJOYED LIFE IN SOUTHLAND,
SAYS BRITISH DANDY.
The stud farm was fully a mile from Royston village, and at precisely a quarter to ten every day, when not away at races, bloodstock sales, or what not, Jack Muskham mounted his potter pony and ambled off to what the journalist had termed his ‘equine nursery’. He was accustomed to point to this potter pony as an example of what horses become if never spoken to in any but a gentle voice. She was an intelligent little three-year-old, three-quarter-bred, with a fine mouse-coloured coat over which someone seemed to have thrown a bottle of ink and then imperfectly removed the splashes. Beyond a slightly ragged crescent on her forehead, she had no white at all; her mane was hogged, and her long tail banged just below her hocks. Her eyes were quiet and bright, and – for a horse – her teeth were pearly. She moved with a daisy-clipping action, quickly recovering from any stumble. Ridden with a single rein applied to her neck, her mouth was never touched. She was but fourteen-two, and Jack Muskham’s legs, he using long stirrup leathers, came down very far. Riding her, as he said, was like sitting in a very easy chair. Besides himself, only one boy, chosen for the quietness of his voice, hands, nerves, and temper, was allowed to handle her.